Social Networking in Government: Opportunities & Challenges Part 2

Social networking (SN) has become the new online rage. Blogs, wikis, RSS feeds and social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have provided creative ways to recruit, engage, connect and retain employees. They have also provided an opportunity to facilitate strategic knowledge sharing across organizations and government agencies.

Most SN tools are Web-based and provide a variety of ways for users who share interests and/or activities to interact. Users can share best practices and build communities of practice. These tools provide email and instant messaging services — constant connectivity. SN tools can help with the current challenges facing today’s government agencies such as brain drain from a retiring workforce, the need to create inter-agency knowledge sharing and an increased need to imbed talent tools where the work is getting done.

The Human Capital Institute (HCI) and Saba partnered to better understand the use and potential of SN tools in the government workplace. The goal was to learn what SN tools are being used in government today, the effectiveness of SN for doing government work, future expectations and barriers for its use, and how agency type affects the use and opinions of SN.

Social networking (SN) has become the new online rage. Blogs, wikis, RSS feeds and social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have provided creative ways to recruit, engage, connect and retain employees. They have also provided ...

Social networking (SN) has become the new online rage. Blogs, wikis, RSS feeds and social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have provided creative ways to recruit, engage, connect and retain employees. They have also provided ...